If you’re into conspiracy-theory comics, “Order” sounds good on paper: a secret society covering up the existence of a gate to Hell near Denver. Unfortunately, Tim and Mulele find the Truthful Comics take on this concept comes up short. Listen and find out why.

2 users commented in " Critiquing Comics #043: “Order” "

Okay…….? Yeah? This was a mess, and I’ll be keeping this short as I’m at work and typing on a iPad is not my favorite thing to do. I heard the critique on ‘Stitcher Radio’and I read the comic…

The comic feels like its a weekly series, and you guys are right, drawn way too fast too meet that deadline… Slow down… Rough out your pages.

Try penciling and inking then scanning and coloring. I looks and feels like its %100 digital, wich isn’t a bad thing if you have a fine grasp of digital production, but having the basics down will help you in the long run.

Backgrounds, backgrounds and more backgrounds! Wtf! A box with squares in them? That constitutes a building? My 7 year old can do that.

Draw or sketch out buildings from the real world. I know it’s faster to make it up from memory, but nothing trains you better than the real thing. And draw trees, beaches, plants cups, clothes from the real world… Trust me it’ll be easier when you are trying to pull it out from your imagination.

Anatomy! I get that you are going for stylized art, but even the basic manga artist study from real life. Try to sketch people doing every day things, don’t spend a fuck-ton of time on it, but one or two rough sketches daily of people doing ordinary things will improve your skills tremendously. And study the folds in clothing, it’s actually pretty amazing.

I get that you are working this as a web comic, but seriously think out your panels, think camera angles. Move your camera around, my brother hired a friend of his to video tape his wedding, the guy basically put the camera on a tri-pod in a corner of the room for three hours…. Yeah. Boo!

Write out your story, pre-production is the guideline that’ll lead to the final result.
And my last peace of advice is quality, not quantity. Now get back to work, you are not getting paid to read this all day!

Using the entervoid.com grading system I give this project

Quality – 4
Creativity – 5
Entertainment – 4

I hope this helps, and I hope it’s okay that I gave my personal critique

Alberto Melendez

Ps,
When I get my book done I hope everyone will also give it a critique, heck…. It’s the best way for me to improve.

BronxBully85 said,

in March 19th, 2013 at 5:20 pm

Ya, so I read the comic, and I know I may get crucified for this, but, I actually enjoyed it.
I think 311Alberto touched on some good points here about roughing pages and such and as far as deadlines go, but honestly sometimes you have to just take it for what it is. A lot of the fun in comics, especially when webcomics like this one done on an independent scale comes out, gets kind of sucked away with all the technicalities being tossed around.

I’ll start off with the overall story:

I will say that I saw the advertisements for the story before I read it and realized that it was a set up for a much bigger story/comic. So I took it for what it was. The fact that it was set up in a format that seemed like a weekly serial kind of set it aside from everything else that’s being done. The story itself was rather easy to follow since it was broken into sections, and the payoff kind of shows where all these stories meet, leaving much more to be desired in the long run. My interest has been peaked.

Artwork

there’s a few things that kind of rubbed me the wrong way, mostly with the colors at some points, but in others, they seem more alive and kind of jump out at you. I actually enjoyed the art in this one a lot more than some of the other comics that were in the webcomic section of the truthful site. some of them weren’t even comics at all, more so ads for upcoming comics. The one thing I kind of don’t agree with 311 on is the camera angle thing. You don’t want to OVER think your angles because you will get caught up in a situation where there’s more flash than substance. That’s something I learned from creating comics myself over the years. I think he kept the simple approach and it actually works for the story, but that’s just my opinion.

Overall, it was actually a fun read for me. I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist myself so I found a lot of the reference to be pretty awesome. I think the story is a great gateway to what is to come with the bigger story, which by now I hear is up and running on the same site now, but I’ve yet to check out.

I would give the Creativity a 8 at least on the little scale, there. Art I’d say about strong 6 1/2 based on the fact that I’ve seen worse(even on that same site, not to be rude).
Entertainment I’ll give a strong 8 because there were a few typoes in the dialogue, but I am still able to read it and understand what’s going on. I believe that I may have been a bit more fair in this critique than you guys, mainly because I saw the direction it was going in and enjoyed what the creator was trying to get across, versus being too technical and just taking the story for what it’s worth which is what makes reading comics fun in the first place.
Hope I didn’t offend anyone, and good luck on your comic, Alberto. Hopefully you took some of the same advice you gave and your comic comes out to be a great read.